


You Carry Them in Your Heart

by UnnamedElement (Unnamed_Element)



Series: Legolas in Mirkwood (Collection) [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cultural Differences, Ethnicity, Gen, I truly believe the rest is on us, Mirkwood, When Tolkien only gives us chopped up sentences about an entire people, Young Legolas Greenleaf, silvan & nandorin culture, woodelves - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unnamed_Element/pseuds/UnnamedElement
Summary: Legolas and his mother discuss the differences between groups of Men and groups of Elves after his first trip to the Long Lake, and Legolas learns an enduring lesson about the pieces of our past that we always carry with us.Written for Diverse Tolkien Week 2021 on tumblr
Relationships: Legolas Greenleaf & Thranduil's Wife
Series: Legolas in Mirkwood (Collection) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028676
Kudos: 8





	You Carry Them in Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This snippet was written for @diversetolkien‘s Diverse Tolkien Week on tumblr, using the prompts “Women of Color,” “Culture,” and “Anti-racism.” It is inspired by a number of blatant headcanons (most at least vaguely connected to canon-based meta, imho), and the versions of Legolas and Mirkwood that exist in my own work. 
> 
> This piece was also inspired by my own relationship with my ethnically-complex family history. While I will never know what it is to not be white in this world, I do know what it is for whiteness and for imperialism to steal the truth from you. I do know how badly it hurts to never be able to reach those parts of you whose stories were erased; how it hurts to know that your family’s language was beaten out of them; how it hurts to know that someone somewhere in the past started shaming children for their questions and teaching them lies about their brown skin. I know how it feels to have nameless grandmothers, to have ancestors whose stories were lost to time and shame and trauma, to the endless march of the victor’s narrative.
> 
> So, all that is where this little ficlet is coming from. My own family nonsense, but also Mirkwood and its arguably colonial positioning, plus all my own _very gratuitous,_ worldbuilding and headcanons.

It was midafternoon and the sun shone weakly overhead, and Legolas and his mother were traveling with a small group of elves. It was cold but not too cold, but Legolas was young, and his mother had buttoned him into the fisherman’s sweater gifted him by the Lakemen before they set out that morning. 

“Mother,” he asked quietly, and he curled his fingers into his mother’s shawl from where he rode behind, pickaback, and he listened vaguely to the murmurs and melodies of the elves around him. “Why are the Men of the Lake pale like moonlight?”

It was the first time his mother had taken him with her on her trade trips to negotiate with the men around Mirkwood, and he had had _many_ questions.

“Your father is pale like moonlight, _emlineg_ ,” his mother responded, hitching him up slightly so his face was pressed momentarily into her curls.

“He is not,” Legolas said, shaking his head firmly. “He is pale like _sunlight_.”

“Your friend Ithildim is pale like moonlight, then,” his mother answered smoothly.

“Hm,” he said quietly, and he laid his head on her back, raised a hand to stifle a yawn, for they had been up since long before sunrise. “Ithildim _is_ pale like moonlight...”

There was quiet for a time and Legolas watched those traveling around him. They walked up the River and back toward the wood, and his home was a dark mound on the horizon. The elves around him, however, were _not_ all pale like moonlight. They were some of them the moon, yes, but they were also autumn trees under sun, were hazelnut and chestnut, every shade of the endless wood. 

He spoke again: “The Lake is to the east of our home, Mother?”

“It is, child.”

“Saida said the men of the West are different than those of the Long Lake.”

His mother laughed lightly, and Legolas gripped her tighter. “And how would Saida know _anything_ about the men of the Western Woods?”

“Her brother has told her,” Legolas said eagerly. “For he is a captain and has seen many things! He says the people to the West run the plain outside our woods, and they worship the North Sun.”

“And so do you, _emlineg_ ,” his mother countered. “The Sun brings us warmth after long winters, does it not?”

Legolas reached a hand out into the air around them and the wind played between his fingers.

“But she says those Men are _not_ pale like moonlight, Mother. They are like loam beneath leaf mould after winter.”

“Like you, then?” his mother asked wryly.

Legolas shook his head behind her. 

“Like me?” she tried again.

He shook his head once more. “ _You_ are too dark, and _I_ am too light. And they are cool, like clay under silt.”

“Ah,” his mother murmured, and Legolas felt it vibrate from her into him as he pulled his hand back in, wrapped it gently in that hair that was so like his own. “Saida knows a lot for just being told.”

“Her brother is also an artist,” Legolas said matter-of-factly. “He draws her pictures of his travels in the evenings, in their camps. He brings them home to her and tells her stories. His stories are like picture books. I have heard them, too.”

“That is nice of him.”

“Yes. I wish Felavel could draw like him.”

“Felavel brings you back other things from her work,” his mother said neutrally.

“Yes, and I love them—there are so many different things in our Wood!”

“There are, child.”

It was quiet again for a long time. Legolas knit his mother’s hair between his fingers like a loom; her hair was a dark blackwater that contrasted with his tawny skin, warm as the hair she had plaited from his face into a knot that morning, to keep it tidy during travel. He loosened his hold on his mother’s hair and it unwound from his hands like a spring. He scratched at a braid that tugged at his hairline and then turned his attention again to the elves around him. _Their_ hair was light to dark, cornsilk to coils, but the Men of the Lake had hair that waved like gentle weave in shades of brown, and those of the Western Plains had hair that fell in a sheet like dark and windless rain. The men of those places had _one_ hair, it seemed—not many.

He shifted against his mother’s back and spoke: “Why do all the Men in one place look the same, but we elves here—in _our_ one place, in our Wood—we do not?”

His mother did not answer for a moment, and he could feel her thinking, and he matched his breaths to hers while she pondered. She readjusted her hold on his thighs, and Legolas waited.

“Our people are complicated, Legolas,” his mother finally said. “We come from many places and many cultures and many histories, but we all eventually made Mirkwood our home.”

“Ithildim says he has been here _forever_.”

She laughed. “Many of his mother’s people are Avarin, Legolas. But they have not been here _forever_ , though they have been here longer than even our own folk”

“And _much_ longer than Father’s,” Legolas said assuredly. “Well,” he immediately corrected himself, “than—than _his_ father. Is that right, Mother?”

“You have many questions, _emlineg_ ,” his mother said, but she was laughing again. “When we return, I will be telling your father you are finally old enough to begin your studies!”

Legolas shrugged and then squirmed to be let down. She dropped him to the ground and he took her hand.

“That is all right, I guess,” he finally said, and she swung their hands between them. “I think I want to understand.”

There was quiet as they began their journey again, as they watched the wide and wild world move about them.

“The most important thing for you to know, _emlineg_ ,” his mother said finally, after they had walked together for a time, and had fallen slightly behind the others due to Legolas’ small legs. “Is that we are all wood-elves, and that you have parts of _all_ of its folk—East and West of the Mountains—in your soul, and your history. You are the creation of _all_ those who came before you, and you carry them in your heart, where'er you go.”

Legolas looked up at her, and her dark hazel eyes were wide and bright and shining in her face; her hand was tight on his. 

“That is a beautiful thing, child,” his mother whispered. “You must never forget that.”

Legolas stood and watched her without moving for a moment, for there was something happening here that he knew he was not quite old enough to understand, but it seemed so important to his mother...

He eventually raised his arms into the air without words and she picked him up. She adjusted him so he could tuck his head against her chest, so his legs dangled to either side of her hips.

They were almost caught up with their folk when Legolas finally affirmed, voice muffled in her shawl and cut short by a yawn: “I shall _never_ forget it, Mother.”

And she pressed a kiss to his head then, and he let himself drift as the river cut the plains and they eventually breached the wood; let himself drift as voices were lifted in song, as birds wove their notes in his mind; as it fell to darkness around them and the Sun fled them and the night came down heavy; and he drifted, too, as they went through the great gates and crossed the bridge into the Halls. 

He did not even truly wake as his mother handed him to his father, as they hugged above him, as golden hair caught blackwater curls and tickled his tired nose.

_That is a beautiful thing, child. You must never forget that._

But he was safe and he was warm and he was loved, and that was beautiful, and elves—

Elves do not forget.

He adjusted himself against his father’s chest and felt his mother’s hand brush his cheek; his father’s heartbeat was strong and steady in his ears as they moved toward his room, and it was a bass drum at festival that beat in time with his; it was a lullaby that reassured him into sleep.

* * *

Years would pass, and Legolas’ mother would leave them, and so much of what and who he was would flee. 

And yet, even after all that—even after his mother was but a memory in the wood-elves’ storied past—Legolas would carry her inside him. 

He would let her beat in his heart with the dozens of mothers of their people that had come before them—that he had never known—and he would carry them forward, and on.

And to the day that he sailed oversea, Legolas would never _ever_ forget.

**Author's Note:**

> _1\. "Emlineg" is a mother-name Legolas has in 'my' universe, a diminutive Sindarin form of "emelin," or yellowhammer, a small yellow bird._   
>  _2\. One day I'll actually write up a proper meta/analytical essay that highlights the underpinnings for the decisions I made in regards to general elven and Mirkwood-specific cultures but... Today is not that day._


End file.
